Friday, January 01, 2010

Q: You, a black man, sat in on a white-separatist retreat. How did that go over?

A: They were curious and shocked they had found a black man on their premises. A lot of the members of the church took pains to explain to me the difference between white supremacy and white separatism. They said, "We don't think we're better than you; we just want to be separate from you."

Racism is wanting to make definitions about which races are superior, and which are inferior.

Nationalism is wanting to be with people like you: culture, heritage, values, language and customs.

Underlying all of these is (a) similar raw ability and (b) similar parallel evolution, meaning that your people have similar tastes, tendencies and inclinations. Instinct is shaped by evolution and is the cornerstone of culture and values.

I use "race" for ethnicity in the above because it's how we speak of it. While I think both race and ethnicity/ethny are valid concepts, I think ethnicity is the more precise term.

Racism is caused by diversity, or ethnic competition where ethnic segregation is disallowed. The response is reactionary and violent.

Nationalism is the opposite of racism -- it is tolerance, in parallel, for all ethnic groups, including the right to preserve themselves by segregating. After all, if we force other groups upon them, they'll be bred into a hybrid, and the original group will be destroyed. That's racism and genocide.

If we do not suppress the urge to segregate, whether by Black Panthers or White Wolves, I think we'll all be OK.

William A. White ("Bill White") and I don't agree on a whole heck of a lot, but I respect his intelligence and clarity. Sadly, we won't have him as part of the discussion anymore because some people were upset by his words:

Angry with the way Citibank was handling his account, William A. White dug up a bank employee's home address, her telephone number and the name of her husband.

He then sent the information to Jennifer Petsche in an e-mail, threatening to share it with other dissatisfied customers.

"Consider this," White wrote. "As I'm sure, being in the collection business and having the attitude about it that you do, that you often make people upset. Lord knows that drawing too much publicity and making people upset is what did in Joan Lefkow."

But because White sought personal gain from Petsche -- he wanted to improve his credit score by getting her to clear up his disputed credit card debt -- prosecutors have charged him with threatening her with the intent to extort.

Looks like a loophole: she was scared, he stood to gain -- by not getting reamed by a bill collector. Very dodgy logic here.

White, the self-proclaimed commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, was convicted of three counts of communicating threats in interstate commerce and one count of witness intimidation, the U.S. Justice Department said in a release.

White, who was acquitted on three other counts, faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

The verdict, however, was not a total repudiation of White's assertion that the First Amendment should protect his incendiary speech. Of seven counts against White, the federal jury acquitted him of three.

White, who will be sentenced later, could face up to 35 years in prison.

At least for now, the convictions will silence a man called "possibly the loudest and most obnoxious neo-Nazi leader in America " by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups

In closing arguments to the jury, Justice Department attorney John Richmond spent more than an hour recounting the personal attacks and death wishes that White leveled against a bank employee from Missouri, a nationally syndicated columnist from Maryland, a university administrator from Delaware, a small-town mayor from New Jersey, a human rights lawyer from Canada and two tenants of an apartment complex in Virginia Beach.

White has been in jail almost continuously since his arrest in October 2008.

The convictions marked a huge setback for an online agitator who up until now has managed to straddle the fine line between free speech and illegal threats. Earlier this year, a judge in Chicago dismissed a similar charge against White on free speech grounds.